Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Friday last week was Maila’s last day in the office. She is leaving to pursue her doctorate studies in another country. She cried again, just as she did in her farewell party the Tuesday before that, where she was presented with a framed printout of her picture with us during our Quezon team building.

Doc Elmer was also there, after his parent institution revoked his shared faculty status starting next term.

The difference between them though is that Doc Elmer will ride out the rest of the term until course card distribution, while Maila already had early finals and removals.

That means one of two things for me: more work in the form of math subjects and taking care of the robotics lab with David, or getting to have new co-faculty who will be handling those chores. Or it could be a combination of both.

That’s the final news from last week, so on to this week.

Last Monday’s exam in the electricity and magnetism lecture class had seven items, two of which were the same as the examples we discussed last Thursday. There were the current in a wire in a magnetic field, and the magnetic field of two parallel currents.

There were no questions about those problems during the exam though. The questions were about the item on magnetic field of a partial arc, to which I had to draw a corrected illustration on the board; about the only constant they had to use (typed incorrectly; just one of the cons against making the test the late night before the exam); and the units and the symbols for the quantities we used.

For the last one, I already told my cousin the Friday before to spread the word that the equations will be given but not the units and what quantities the symbols represented. This, I figured, would make them study even a little bit before the exam, instead of relying on the fact sheet that has been provided for them for most of the term.

Unfortunately, not all of them got the message, and it still did not stop them from asking details I had assumed they already knew. This included the basic information that B is the symbol for magnetic field and the small Greek letter mu stands for the magnetic dipole moment.

Even though I relented and wrote short descriptions before each equation, there were some who complained that they got confused when one equation was labeled as being for the dipole moment when it started out with “B =…”

It’s not my fault anymore that they didn’t review.

I also had two meetings in two consecutive afternoons last Monday and Tuesday. First it was an update for the Interactive Science committee, and the second was just the full-time faculty monthly convening.

The second was my only work for Tuesday, because I had no finals scheduled on that day. I used the time to make my exams for Graphics One, electricity and magnetism lab, and Trigonometry for Wednesday and Thursday.

Somehow I’m a little reluctant to start talking about things knowing I would have to break the momentum because of lack of time, and continue talking about it tomorrow.

One strange thing about the faculty meeting was that Sir Joel, who was supposed to preside in the absence of Ma’am Lissa and the Dean, relinquished the chair to Doc Elmer, so that it became his last official meeting with us.

And it’s time. I’ll resume with the aforementioned topics tomorrow.